Elon Musk says the only reason he wants to make money is to colonize Mars

Elon Musk’s ambitious plan to turn the human race into a multi-planetary species, starting first with the colonization of Mars, will cost a lot of money. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who laid out his Mars plans today at a press conference, hopes to eventually make the cost of taking a trip to Mars equal that of the average US home, at around $200,000 per ticket. Still, there’s a long road ahead to funding the complex architecture of a stable Earth-Mars transportation system.

To cement his commitment to the project, Musk says the only reason he’s personally accumulating wealth — through his various ventures in renewable energy, electric cars, and space transport, is to help make this radical idea a reality. “As we show that this is possible, that this dream is real, I think the support will snowball over time,” Musk said onstage today at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. “The main reason I’m personally accumulating assets is to fund this.”